Reviewing Suzume while gamer brained
Introduction: WU-TANG over TANG
It was a quite shame that I started to visit Giantbomb only shortly after Ryan Davis’ untimely passing back in 2013. I do wonder had he been alive in 2023, A would he be with Nextlander or still co-hosting with Gerstmann and B would This Ain’t No Game return in some form given the year’s video game adaption “volcano”. More importantly, would “Giantbomb’s anime editor before Patty Klepek” have been bold enough to cover Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume on the Wonderful Universe of This Ain’t No Game.
In markets outside Japan, or at least here in miHoYo’s country of origin, Suzume no Tojimari came out between Dungeon & Dragon Honor Among Thieves and the Super Mario Bros Movie. Your truly dare to say that Suzume is a better video game movie than those 2 with big brands combined. Don’t get me wrong, Honor Among Thieves is a still a surprisingly fun fantasy swashbuckler and Mario is entertaining in its own rights. But neither can hold a candle to Suzume in term of feeling like a video game design from the bottom up.
But first, my thoughts on Shinkai flicks
Matoko Shinkai is an animation director breaking into the scene in very early aughts. He crashed into the scene as a one-man animation studio with Voice of a Distant Star, something endorsed by Yoshiyoki “Creator of Gundam” Tomino himself. For better and worse, that 25 minutes long short showed the animation director’s strength and weakness in equal measure. It’s visually stunning, well thought out to a degree and lacking originality to an audience as “well-read” as its creator. It is Gunbuster with the revenge plot cut out after all. And I remembered enjoying 5 Centimeters Per Second only once when I watched it during a hours-long wait for the dentist.
Even as someone who think Your Name is just fine, I found Weathering with You to be a big disappointment, “what the fuck is this piece of shit?” provoking kind of disappointment. So, I consider Suzume a big bounce back for this man’s body of works.
Closing doors, heh? Sounds easy enough.
As it’s called in Japanese, Suzume no Tojimari (Turns out, it’s the working title from the very beginning) can be literally translated into “Suzume closing doors”. The late title card of the movie certainly plays into that, as it would appear after Suzume closed the first of five doors. I took the screenshot above deliberately with the white line in the middle because the title does not come in full until a door closing visual and sound effect hits. “Suzume’s Journey” as it’s released in miHoYo’s country of origin is too generic of a title if you ask me.
Closing doors, or pretty much gates to hell in abandoned places is all the action this come-of-age story provides. It’s almost like a video game mechanic that can be built on. 5 doors in this movie do get harder to close. First door being one out of nowhere in an abandoned hot spring. Second being a slide door of an abandoned school. If you think so far so easy, the third one would throw a curve ball for it’s on a moving Ferris Whell cart in an, you guess it, abandoned theme park. The fourth one only shows hell and damnation pulling out of a working railway tunnel without way to pinpoint the origin. And the fifth and final can only be closed on the other side, aka the underworld where hell and damnation lurks. This is where I think this movie pulls “gamey” off better than Honor Among Thieves and Mario.
It’s slipping hair to debt whether D&D is a tabletop game franchise or a video game franchise, but with the frequency of “Baldur’s Gate” being referenced in that movie, I would call it a video game movie. BG the third was a king many hailed to in 2023 after all. Still its tabletop root would determine that its mechanic would not feel as rigorous as those in video games, friends fantasizing about swashbuckling together require something bit more loosey goosey.
Then there is the polygonal animated action flick with the Mario brand slapped on it. The plumper gets to work fast in a world real to him? 2D platforming. The plumper goes to a fantastical world and cannot handle the regular traffic there? 3D platforming. The plumper goes into a Thunderdome situation? Smash Bros got his back. High speed car chase? Time for Mario Kart. And even as someone who still swear by Japanese action comic for boys from time to time nowadays as I am, that final showdown against Bowser made me go “What’s this anime bullshit!” Or maybe they just suddenly threw in a turned-based JRPG battle? What a weird mixture! Why couldn't it stick to a core mechanic and build on it like Suzume did?
This “core mechanics” is not the only thing this movie has in common with video games. Suzume’s journey is from the west corner of Japan to the east corner, much like 2D platform’s from left to right routine. Then there are shots like those even before the late title card.
The shots do feel like same character moving through the same graphic adventure screen under different circumstances. Shinkai is credited for “Created, written and story-boarded by” minutes before the “Directed by” one, so I can only imagine the sense of “video game” is intentional.
Of course, Shinkai’s “lack of originality” can still be felt in this flick. For one thing, there is the “love saves the world” trope. Mr. “Damn, he is hot”, being a talking chair with only 3 legs for most of the movie, would tell Suzume to feel the memory people share with their loved one around the first 3 doors to make the locks appear.
And no, I am not going to talk about the cat they cast an actual child to voice and made plush out of. A comparably subtle Ghibli reference later into the movie almost made me stand up and yell “Oh, fuck you, Shinkai!” when I first saw the movie in theatre. This little shit being a social network sensation with one blink-and-you-will-miss-it post directly referencing a Ghibli movie just block this annoying fur ball out of my mind completely. Until the plot mentioned it again that is.
Still, it’s nice to see a gamey come of age story does not lay into role-playing games’ leveling territory. I celebrate my 34th birthday in the week of writing this. I know enough to think that life would challenging me more yet not offer me better solutions going forward. I had better learn to ask for help more effectively. Strangely how much people can learn from those half of their age at times
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